The sun is going down on a great year of travel, but the latest trip – Colombia in this final week of the year – has ended with five sick people. Was it the eggs we ate yesterday morning? The ceviche the night before? A parasite in the tap water? No matter – we are all down for the count to various degrees, and my Colombia posts will have to wait for the New Year.

I managed to get my feet out the door to seven other countries this year, and ranged far and wide throughout the U.S. as well. I started off in the freezing cold with Russia, Estonia, and Finland in January, warmed up in Israel, Jordan, and Mexico during the summer, and finished 2015 broiling under the Colombian sun in high-altitude Bogotá and steamy Cartagena. It was a perfect mix of trips – some solo jaunts, various two-person combos, and a few family gatherings.

My final photo of the year shows a thrill I got this summer when son A and his friends gave a shout out to my blog on the Lennon Wall in Prague. I haven’t been able to find a way to use it, but I love the bright pink background and the five minutes of fame I got before someone no doubt painted over it.

Sense memories are often the source of some powerful post-trip nostalgia, at least for me. Most of these are tied directly to the place where they were experienced, like the tinkling of cowbells in an alpine meadow, the aroma of grilled souvlaki meat in a Greek taverna, or the low hum of chanting monks in Tibet. But I have also formed random associations of certain pieces of music with particular places that are just as potent as these more intrinsic sounds and smells.

I have a short and whimsical playlist I associate with almost every trip I have taken and more often than not, it makes no sense thematically or chronologically. When I hear certain songs or artists, I am transported back to the strangest places – cities and countries that have no inherent connection to the music in question. One of the most recent examples is Daft Punk’s summer of 2013 hit song “Get Lucky,” which instantaneously evokes a warm summer day in Ljubljana, Slovenia, every time I hear it. This one, at least, fits its timeframe; I was there that summer, and every restaurant and bar along the Ljubljanica River seemed to be playing the catchy tune as we strolled the streets of this incredibly lovely little town. The light, peppy beat perfectly reflected the bright, energetic summer vibe of the city, and I (now annoyingly) contact my travel buddy K every time I hear the song and think of our happy time there.

Lucky to be in lovely Ljubljana

A more unlikely combo is R.E.M. and the twisting, turning roads of the Arcadia region of Greece’s Peloponnese. The track I remember most, “Losing My Religion” was released in 1991, but this trip was many years later, and there was little about those dusty roads and small villages that seemed connected to the haunting, mandolin-heavy melody of this song. Nevertheless, R.E.M. is now forever linked to that road trip of shimmering hot days, with seven people packed into a van on the way to an ancestral village and home. The memory works both ways; I hear the tune whenever I look at the village photos, and I think of the mountain drive every time R.E.M. comes on.

Winding through the Peloponnese with R.E.M.

Some parts of the world, whether through geographic or cultural isolation, are decades behind in the radio music scene. Two anachronisms still make me smile. One was listening to The Doors in remote Namche Bazaar, Nepal, on the trail to Everest Base Camp just a few years ago. On a dismal, rainy night, two of my fellow trekkers and I escaped our freezing lodge for a beer and some popcorn in a tiny bar warmed by a potbellied stove. We sat for hours, listening to the rain pinging against the metal roof and the strains of some very dated ‘60s and ‘70s songs, most notably a medley of The Doors. I may have thought about “The End” and “Riders on the Storm” at Jim Morrison’s grave in Paris, but I certainly did not expect to hear his memorable voice deep in the Khumbu in Nepal!

The Doors play Namche Bazaar, Nepal

Do you associate somber, serious Russia with bouncy Boy George? On the day of my arrival, I tried to make sense (while seriously jetlagged, no less) of the incongruous juxtaposition of “Karma Chameleon” and the austere architecture I was viewing out my sleet-covered cab window one January day. I would be hard pressed to think of a song less evocative of Soviet Russia than this, but it’s fixed now: St. Petersburg’s outskirts and Culture Club, together forever.

Culture Club or culture shock? on the gloomy drive in from Pulkovo Airport, St Petersburg, Russia

Aside from these random associations, there are also the songs that were playing on my own iPod on different occasions, either on purpose or arbitrarily. Pitbull took my mind off my panting on the way up the last set of steps and hills to Dead Woman’s Pass on the Inca Trail, The Fray have shut out any number of people snoring in nearby tents, and Kacey Musgraves’ country twang accompanied us on a drive all over Iceland’s country roads last summer.

Above The Fray in Paine Grande Camp, Chile

Chilling out to Kacey Musgraves on the Ring Road, Iceland

Last but not least, there was one unforgettable trip on which we provided the “music” ourselves. We had grown very attached to our adorable, charming guide in Tibet after spending over a week with him in Lhasa and the Tibetan countryside. As we drove back from our expedition to Everest North Base Camp, we grew silly and sentimental about leaving him and decided to sing along to many of his favorite western artists, including Michael Bolton (had to hum that one!), Back Street Boys, and Céline Dion. I will never hear “My Heart Will Go On” again without a mental picture of a tiny Tibetan guy crooning his heart out on the Friendship Highway!

Back Street Boys enliven the Friendship Highway, Tibet

Off-roading to Celine Dion in Tibet

Do you have an internal soundtrack from each trip you’ve taken? Stay tuned for another post some day on all the books I associate with each trip!

This question, and its individual parts, was posed to me multiple times in the months preceding my trip to Russia a few weeks ago. When I first made the plans, I picked this destination for my January break, in part, because my mental picture of Russia has always included snow swirling on railroad tracks, border guards in fur hats, vast empty parks with snowy trees, and overheated rooms reeking of boiled cabbage! And that’s exactly what we got!

As the trip grew closer, my friends’ and family’s concerns proliferated. I am a fiercely independent traveler; I like a few guided tours here and there to learn more, but I like to be free also – to arrange my own transportation and lodging, to roam the streets, and to find things to do that feel a little more local. At this particular time, less intrepid souls fussed with me about Mr. Putin’s recent aggression, economic desperation that might boost crime against tourists with cameras, jewelry, and dollars, and even international sanctions that could affect food supplies. Stay in your hotel for dinner, I was advised, and certainly don’t walk around after dark. (Given that “after dark” started at 4 pm, that one was a no-go right there!)

That was a long introduction to say that I succeeded in doing this trip my way at my time; Russia in January was magical, and I would not have changed a thing. Unlike most visitors to Russia, my sister and I arranged our visas ourselves, bought plane and train tickets online, booked directly with hotels, arranged a few tours with a guide we found on the internet, and made ourselves at home as much as possible, even when that meant choking down a really bad lunch one day.

Of course, we visited the main draws of St. Petersburg, our primary destination, and its environs. Our first day after arriving, we drove out of the city to Tsarskoye Selo, the imperial village in the town of Pushkin. This is the home of Catherine’s Palace, the Baroque summer residence of the Russian monarchs from Peter the Great to Nicholas II. The palace interior is fascinating in the (been-there, done-that) way of all palaces – over-the-top gilded opulence, rooms covered in jewels (in this case, amber), thrones, rich fabrics, and impossibly high ceilings.

For me, though, the highlight was the snowy park in which the lavish estate is set. The whole complex of architectural structures and gardens was nestled among frosted trees and misty lanes, with the buildings and their brightly-painted walls glowing softly like Color Splash effects in black-and-white photographs. It was a peaceful morning scene, and our walk through the frigid park is a favorite memory.

The Hermitage Museum and winter palace was, likewise, a required stop, and it did not disappoint in its majesty and mouth-dropping enormity. One could roam for days through the galleries and exhibits, but we limited our time to four hours or so. The contents are impressive (Rembrandts, Italian masters, an Elgin Marble loan, the peacock clock, etc.), but we concentrated on their backdrop – the floors, walls and ceilings of the building itself.

We made cursory stops at a number of other venerable St Petersburg sites – Peter and Paul Fortress (and the Romanov and other tsars’ tombs), the Church on Spilled Blood, St. Isaac’s Cathedral, and Uprising Square, among others – and spent a very memorable evening at the Mariinsky Theater for a ballet performance of Swan Lake.

But we also enjoyed several days of just wandering the city between tourist stops. We never once felt threatened in any way, and the mood of the city during the New Year’s/Orthodox Christmas season was not exactly festive, but positive. We never saw any other English-speaking people in our time there (other than a few hotel employees), and the Russian people were patient with us as we pointed at food items and picked like kindergartners through the rubles in our hands to pay. We walked for hours with fur hoods cinched around our faces and handwarmers in our gloves, then burst into massively overheated buildings to eat or shop.

We did a vodka tasting and ate borscht, buckwheat groats, black bread, and blini. We stood in line like the Leningrad proletariat to buy greasy little pyshki (doughnuts) and sweet milky coffee at Zhelyabova 25, a Soviet-era shop where the quarters are cramped, the napkins are square sheets of non-absorbent greasepaper, and the prices are ridiculously low. We ate a $4 lunch (for two!) at a decidedly downscale luncheonette with a cafeteria-style set-up that allowed us to point at our choices (quite poor ones, it turned out), sit at communal tables with local families, and permanently impregnate our clothing with the smell of boiled cabbage and pickled vegetables.

We walked Nevsky Prospekt, the city’s main drag for both tourists and citizens, and its offshoots until our toes froze in our boots, admiring the picturesque canals, rivers, and bridges. We lurched, stiff and frozen, along the Neva River embankments to see the carvings there, and we ventured out in a snowstorm one night to eat a delicious vegetarian dinner in a cozy below-grade restaurant with an incongruous photo booth outside.

We ended our time in Russia with a train ride to Estonia. I felt like Anna Karenina boarding the aging, utilitarian train from an icy platform in blowing snow, awkwardly leaping the 18-inch gap into the shabby car with suitcase in hand and settling into an incredibly uncomfortable seat for the 6 ½-hour ride to Tallinn. Along the way, we stopped at a number of isolated countryside stations; at one, I saw a lone babushka and her dog on a cold, dark street and shivered to think I was really, finally in the Russia of my literature-fueled dreams. The border crossings to leave Russia and enter Estonia were satisfyingly stereotypical, with gruff, fur-hatted officers taking our passports and halting our progress for a good hour, and a last-minute attempt to dump rubles in the bar car involved some hilarious miming to buy a couple of beers and some peanuts.

We found no reason to avoid going to Russia right now, even in the dead of winter, and do not understand why so few visitors make an independent foray here. The visa work is admittedly cumbersome and expensive, but once there, it is not difficult to enjoy all the country has to offer without being coddled and dragged around on group tours. Our best memories are not of the big sights, but of the small moments – pushing in line to buy a salmon and cucumber sandwich, rattling down the railroad tracks through the night, listening to Boy George and chuckling at the apt anachronism as we passed looming old Soviet government buildings in a cab, warming up on pumpkin soup and potato pancakes behind a curtained window, and on one glorious January day, seeing the sun come out and illuminate the canals and buildings of this magnificent city just for us.

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I’m a restless, world-wandering, language-loving, book-devouring traveler trying to straddle the threshold between a traditional, stable family life and a free-spirited, irresistible urge to roam. I’m sure I won’t have a travel story every time I add to this blog, but I’ve got a lot! I’m a pretty happy camper (literally), but there is some angst as well as excitement in always having one foot out the door. Come along for the trip as I take the second step …